[meteorite-list] Meteorite art presented to Stephen Hawking.

[ensoramanda]

Hi All,

As a passionate meteorite collector it is always a pleasure to hear 
about other collectors experiences and escapades through the list, so I 
thought I would give a quick account of mine, leading up to a meeting 
with Professor Stephen Hawking.

I have always been fascinated by what we learn about our world/solar 
system through astronomy and meteoritics ever since my curiosity was 
sparked when the Barwell meteorite fell nearby the day after my 9th 
birthday. Although I enjoyed and studied sciences I have always had a 
creative streak which lead me to work as an Artist and Designer, 
spending many years as lecturer in Art and Education but always 
continuing as a practicing artist.

I now am privileged to be able to just concentrate totally on creating 
and exhibiting my own work, much of which is still informed and inspired 
by astronomy, science and meteoritics in particular. My work is very 
rarely figurative and explores the complexities of systems and patterns 
which I observe.

So as you see I probably approach the subject of meteoritics from a 
slightly different perspective to most on the list.

I have been working alongside and following several other artists with 
similar interests. Jem Finer (once in the band called the Pogues many 
years ago) is one in particular who was recently artist in residence in 
the department of Astrophysics at Oxford University and wrote a little 
piece that I thought I would quote to try and show the thinking behind 
projects I am persuing with three different University Astronomy 
departments at the moment.

"While their ultimate aims may differ - science seeking a clear answer, 
reproducible and verifiable under experimental conditions, art working 
toward the unexpected - their starting points and working methods have 
much in common. Both science and art observe, ask questions, form 
hypotheses, conduct experiments. Serendipity is not the preserve of art. 
Observational cosmologists build progressively more powerful telescopes, 
not always to look for something that they theorise exists, but to see 
what lies out there, on the edges of space and time, unknown and 
unexpected. Curiosity on a cosmic scale.

I'm interested in the questions cosmologists ask, I'm curious to 
discover how things work. I'm not trying to formulate deep physical 
laws; I'm taking this comprehension - or lack of it - as a starting 
point to discover connections, to make tangible ideas contrary to my 
experience, to experiment and, finally, to make something that 
communicates the results of this process."

Through this work I was recently asked to present a piece of my work to 
Professor Stephen Hawking to commemorate his visit to Leicester 
University in the UK.

The artwork given to him was actually from a series of simple recordings 
of meteorite structures I have been doing, observing structures in 
meteorites using various methods from simply drawing to using Scanning 
Electron Microscopes (SEM) to image parts of my collection. The chosen 
piece was however slightly different as it was created by taking a print 
directly from a meteorite.

I have a large slice of Seymchan (about 25cm diameter) which has been 
etched to show an amazing Widmanstatten structure (or Thompson structure 
if you wish). The slice is very even and so I was able to use it in just 
the same way as a traditional etching plate, by inking it up (with a 
little trepidation I must admit) and wiping the surface to leave ink in 
the pattern (intaglio printing) and then putting the whole thing through 
a press to create the image on paper.  I then worked on this to bring 
out more detail through observation.

On Wednesday this week I was thrilled to be on the welcoming committee 
when Professor Hawking toured the University and was able to say a few 
words and personally present the work to him. A day to remember.

I am now awaiting the official photographs of the presentation to be 
released, so unfortunately nothing to show yet. I'll post a link to them 
later if anybody wants to see them.

So I'll finish with a quote which I like...

As Albert Einstein said: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is 
the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to 
whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and 
stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Graham Ensor, UK